Please support the NHS Birthday 5th July. Try and help make a big splash. Share, invite friends and encourage them to make it big. The Tories have no mandate for £22 billion cuts.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/141710829185241/permalink/1626364570719852/
We’ve had a busy few weeks out on the streets with our Leeds KONP stall and lots of VOTE NHS postcards . We seem to have distributed about 15,000 of the 20,000 we ordered.
Thursday 1 June 11am Wetherbymarket 11am
Saturday 3rd June 11am probably Morley tbc
Tuesday 6th June 4.30- 5.30 Boar Lane. We’ll then join the Pre -Election Rally organised by people from Leeds TUC with the People’s Assembly and Unite the Resistance at 5.30 in City Square and give out more postcards. Labour MP Richard Burgon and Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of PCS are down to speak.
Next meeting of Leeds Keep Our NHS Public on Wednesday 14th June at 6.30pm in O’Neill’s pub, behind the Town Hall.
And if you want more illumination on the Sustainability and Transformation Plans ( now called Partnerships!) you might like to read
Latest minutes
Konp Leeds mtg 26.4.17 YEP_letter_from_Alan_lauder_re_withdrawl_of_gluten_free_food_from_prescription_21.4.17
Letter by Alan Lauder in YEP
YEP_letter_from_Alan_lauder_re_withdrawl_of_gluten_free_food_from_prescription_21.4.17
Wed 26th April 6.30 – 8pm : Leeds Keep Our NHS Public meeting in O’Neill’s pub side room immediately behind the Town hall
Sat 29th April assemble 11.30am outside the Art Gallery. Leeds TUC May Day March: Theme is pay, living wage etc.
Wed 10th May 6.30 Leeds KONP mtg in O’Neill’s.
Fri 19th May 7-8pm Silent Vigil for mental health in St. George’s Square, Huddersfield
Sat. 20th May 11- 12.30 Leeds KONP stall outside Boots in Town
Sat June 10th KONP national AGM and Conference in London
Sat July 1st Day of protest and celebration of the NHS’s birthday, probably centred in town
Wed 5th July Actual NHS birthday, celebrating the NHS and NHS staff, probably centred on LGI and St. James
At least 25,000 postcards were distributed , Radio Aire, Radio Leeds , Capitol and Bradford Community radio all broadcast interviews before the march. There was film coverage on Saturday evening from BBC and Yorkshire TV and from Made in Leeds TV on Monday. See links :
BBC https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155214940439626&id=15286229625
Made in Leeds TV 6pm “On the Aire”: http://www.madeinleeds.tv/catchup/?c=news&p=x4ug8n&pg=1
The Yorkshire Evening Post posted a piece at the weekend
and printed a large pic and write up on Monday.
All of the media coverage was positive although most referred to hundreds of marchers , not thousands !
Leeds Keep Our NHS Public website https://leedskeepournhspublic.wordpress.com/ has quite a few pics and a number of video clips on Leeds KONP facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/141710829185241/
There is an excellent little film from Unity News posted by Melissa Darcy on Monday which has some fantastic footage of the samba band’s exciting final number
https://www.facebook.com/groups/141710829185241/ ( about 3 mins in) as well as footage of the CK999 NHS Detectives Street theatre outside Virgin which most of us will have missed.
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Save Huddersfield Royal Infirmary have lots on their facebook too. See : https://www.facebook.com/groups/377903472573420/events/ .
Join us on 12th in O’Neills at 6.30pm, we’re not stopping
Around three thousand members of the public together with health campaigners, NHS workers, trade unionists and others marched through Leeds on 1st April calling for more funding for the NHS and a halt to cuts, closures, rationing of treatment and privatisation.
Groups from all across Yorkshire were joined by others from further afield including Lincolnshire, Stockport and Darlington. All wanted to show support for campaigns fighting to save threatened services including A&Es, maternity, children’s and stroke units. Members of the public warmly applauded the marchers, and some joined in with the broad ranks of protestors winding their way through the busy centre of town.
United in protest against government health policy, this was also a massive shout for the NHS in appreciation of the amazing work done by staff in increasingly difficult conditions, for a service recognised even by Simon Stevens (head of NHS England) as being one of the most lean and efficient in the world.
At the start a choir fired everyone up to sing: “The NHS belongs to us, we won’t let it go” and the brilliant Public and Commercial Services Union samba band lead the march and provided a great carnival atmosphere. This was supported by the award winning Unite brass band and group of guerrilla accordionists at the back.
A large and enthusiastic cohort from ‘Hands off Huddersfield Royal Infirmary’ in iconic blue sweatshirts were clapped into Victoria Gardens after marching up Park Lane from the station along with protesters from Halifax and Dewsbury.
‘Save Grantham Hospital Campaign’ stood out in bright red hoodies and two full size cardboard skeletons graphically illustrated how the NHS has been cut to the bone.
GMB union members in hospital scrubs pushed a bed and CND propelled a giant missile, exploding the myth that we cannot afford good heath care (‘NHS not Trident’). Labour Party branches brought banners and people from all across the political spectrum shared worries about the future of health care for them and their families.
The same message of resistance to the Government’s erosion of the NHS was reinforced by contributions from an Occupational Therapist and nurse reading their poems, a junior doctor worried about training, a student nurse concerned by the recent withdrawal of bursaries and the adverse effect on recruitment, and trade union representatives supporting NHS staff who have seen a relative 17% reduction in earnings over the last seven years.
A campaigner from ‘York Defend Our NHS’ and mother of a son with autism highlighted the poor state of mental health services. A speaker from the ‘One Day Without Us’ campaign talked about the huge contribution of migrant workers to the NHS, while ‘Kirklees and Calderdale 999’ campaigners warned about the latest £22bn cuts disguised through smoke and mirrors in the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (‘everything about me without me’).
Tracy Brabin, MP for Batley and Spen pledged her support for the NHS and its staff and highlighted the historical role of the Labour Party in setting up the service in 1948.
Leeds ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ who organised this march under the umbrella of ‘Health Campaigns Together’ say that this huge ‘public consultation’ has just strengthened their resolve to work together with others across Yorkshire in challenging the government’s dismantling of the NHS.
Massive financial savings could be made by getting rid of the NHS market in health care, renegotiating outrageous Private Finance Initiative deals that have left some hospitals crippled by debt, and stopping the use of management consultants who cost the NHS in England £630 million in just one year. Until 2010 the NHS was always given an annual budget increase of 4% which helped it provide for changing population needs, costs of new treatments, etc.
Since 2010 the increase has been only 1%, allowing the government to correctly state that ‘it is giving more money to the NHS’ but obscuring the reality of an increasing funding gap which will be approaching £30 billion by 2020. This mismatch between what work the NHS has to do, and the amount of money available is now manifesting as missed targets in cancer, surgery, and A&E, together with thousands of patients who cannot be discharged home because of 40% cuts to council social care budgets.
If funding is not increased, reducing demand is the only option, and we now see this happening through such things as the abandonment of the 18 week target waiting time for planned operations, and the removal of some prescription items including gluten free food, the vital treatment for maintaining long term health in patients with coeliac disease (1% of the population).
Before the introduction of the disastrous ‘Health and Social Care Act’ which removed the Government’s responsibility to maintain a national, public health service and instigated the biggest reorganisation since 1975, David Cameron had promised there would be no major top down restructuring.
This government does not have a mandate from the people to make the 6th richest nation in the world one of the lowest spenders on health care, nor do they have a mandate to siphon off increasing amounts of taxpayers money to the private health care sector.
If the politicians in power are suffering from a combination of amnesia and selective hearing loss, the treatment is ditching the government, not the NHS !
This Friday 17th 2.30 – 3.30 pm we need KONP supporters to come and sing 2 or 3 songs which will be recorded to be used in a short video being prepared for a little exhibition on KONP and protest at Kirkstall Abbey Museum this summer. The tunes are familiar, we have song sheets and will do a run through fist. Enthusiasm is all you need !
This Saturday 18th 11-12.30 : KONP stall, Green Road, Meanwood, outside Waitrose and the shopping centre opposite.
“ “ “ 1.30 – 4pm: placard making session at Inkwell Arts, 31Potternewton Lane, Chapel Allerton (about 200metres from Harrogate Road)
Sat. 25th March 11-12.30 KONP stall 11-12.30 outside Boots town centre store, Commercial St. near Trinity. .
Sat 1st April Yorkshire Health Campaigns Together March for the NHS assembling in Leeds at 11.30 outside Leeds Art Gallery.
Please encourage everyone you know to come
Speaking at meetings ; Let us know if you want a speaker at any trade union, political, campaign or community group meetings and help us spread the word about what is happening to our NHS.
Come to the next Leeds Keep our NHS Public meeting on Wednesday 22nd March 6.30 – 8 in the usual venue, O’Neill’s pub( side room) , Great George St , immediately behind Leeds Town Hall
Postcards available from Leeds KONP and also downloadable versions
